The contrast could not have been more obvious between the experienced champions and the young upstarts after the men's Madison in the Paris Olympics.
While Elia Viviani and Simone Consonni of Italy framed their silver amid multiple Olympic medals, and Michael Mørkøv compared his new bronze medal to a dream gold medal in the Madison in Tokyo, surprise gold medalist Rui Oliveira spontaneously dropped f-bombs in his disbelief that his first pro win as a cyclist was gold at the Olympics.
"I've no words. This whole thing is a dream," an astonished Oliveira said after the race. "I don't think I'm living this. This is just, 'What the fuck.' I've never won a single race in my life. It was so many disappointments to go through these years and to finally - if someone told me I would win my first race at the Olympics, I would say you're fucking kidding me."
Oliveira helped Tadej Pogačar win the Giro d'Italia this year. He was a wingman for Juan Ayuso in last year's Vuelta a España. His best result before Saturday was second on stage 19 of the 2021 Vuelta behind Magnus Cort. He's a helper, a domestique, a second rate-rider. To win a gold medal defies the odds while at the same time confirming that he is within the reach of the world's best riders, as are many domestiques in this sport's 'marginal gains' mindset.
Oliveria's unbridled joy at winning the gold medal is what makes the Olympic Games the Olympic Games. It's a carnival that gives the outsiders a chance to defeat the gladiator and win fame and fortune with their fleeting physical forms, and he and Leitao put on a stellar show.
"We're not even close to being one of the favourites for this race but we rolled our hearts out and with all my brothers and family here, we pushed to the limits," Oliveira said. "We did a perfect race in the last laps. We just didn't blow up and all the other nations blew up."
The gold medal, earned together with Omnium world champion and Olympic Omnium silver medalist Iuri Leitao was a first for Portugal in all sports outside of athletics, and for Oliveira, it was the first win of his life.
It also came as the kind of fairytale come-from-behind win that has formed the script of Hollywood blockbusters.
Oliveira and Leitao were 14 points down on the leaders and well out of medal contention three-quarters of the way through the 200-lap race. But they had a 'Hail Mary' plan to win the race in the last quarter, and the only way to do it would be to lap the field in the final 50 laps.
Italy's experienced duo Viviani and Consonni led the race ahead of Denmark's Mørkøv and Niklas Larsen, and Portugal were looking to get into the medals. It would be a tall order to lap the field, but the aggressive race had shredded the legs and the nerves of even the best riders, and the time to attack had come.
"Iuri told me, 50 laps to go, let's go for it," Oliveira said. "And I told him I feel like someone is going to attack now so we just have to wait for that attack and then we go for it.
"(After the attack came), we just went for them and I saw we were really with good legs so we just kept going. We put the pressure on and then - it's going to blow up and everyone blew up. We just kept riding.
"I looked at the board seven laps to go and we're in first place. I was like this can't be true but... in the end, [we're] Olympic champions!"
Leitao was more composed in the post-race press conference, but his racing style has been just as eager-beaver as Oliveira's verbiage. At the world championships in Glasgow last year, he came almost literally out of nowhere to stun the field in the men's Omnium with his relentless attacks and won the rainbow jersey.
When Portugal attacked early in the Olympic Madison, his rivals might have expected it to be the flash in the pan. But he knew the Madison would be a different type of event.
"The last 25 laps were supposed to be full gas because we were predicting that everybody was really, really fatigued, so we knew if we could just keep it up, they will open on our wheel, and we just had to keep going. And we were sure that we could break them. And in the end, we were right," Leitao said.
"I knew the points were really close. We won the penultimate sprint, and then we took the lap. We were just two points ahead. We were a little bit afraid of the Italians because they are really fast in the sprint, and also the Denmark guys, but I tried to save my golden bullet to the final. We had a plan for me to do the last sprint, and in the end, we had the result we wanted."
In the end, Italy botched an exchange in the closing laps and Consonni crashed, leaving Viviani helpless to follow their attacks, and what could have been a quite heated finale turned into a denouement for Italy as they watched Oliveira and Leitao ride away to gold.
The Portuguese duo may have been unaware of their rivals' misfortune because they certainly didn't expect their plan to come off.
"I've never won a single race in my life," Oliveria said. "To be Olympic champion as my first win is, well, I still don't know if this is all real, really. That's insane."
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